[extropy-chat] Anti-virus protection -- request for information

[Damien Broderick]

Sorry to bust in on the conversation with a very primitive technical 
question, but I could use some help here.

Barbara suffered a mini catastrophe the other day when Microsoft suggested 
that she upgrade her XP with their newfangled download problem-fix package. 
This munged her computer so comprehensively that she had to do an extreme 
system restore that required all her software to be reinstalled. I know, I 
know; Bill Gates is the son of Satan. Leaving that aside for the moment... 
she had just recently bought a rather nice antivirus package from Trend 
Micro Systems. After reinstalling it, and attempting to activate it with 
the mandatory magic passes, secret decoder numbers, and all, she found that 
it refused to work. She e-mailed the company with this sad tale, and they 
pointlessly sent her back the same magic number she'd just sent them; 
presumably another case of replying with a boilerplate response rather than 
bothering to read the e-mail. Attempts to deinstall again and reinstall are 
not working.

Nobody from Trend is responding to further e-mails. And we can't find a 
helpline phone number.

If anyone here works for these folks or has wise words of advice, please 
let me know off list. Thanks!

Damien Broderick